


the smashed word broken open

by notablyindigo



Category: Elementary (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 21:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3503402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notablyindigo/pseuds/notablyindigo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock declares to Joan that she can’t relate to a sense of shame, she nearly laughs herself out of her chair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the smashed word broken open

**Author's Note:**

> "It’s a form of torture, having to sweep through my old life. I know that over the years you’ve suffered your own travails, and you can relate to a profound sense of guilt. You cannot relate to a profound sense of shame."

When Sherlock declares to Joan that she can’t relate to a sense of shame, she nearly laughs herself out of her chair. 

Figuratively speaking, of course, because the comment knocks the wind out of her, and it’s just as well that the door buzzer rings at that moment because, really, what could she possibly say in reply? 

She could, she supposes, tell him about her first day in clinic (crisp new white coat, stethoscope that she only just knew how to use). She could tell him about how, when she met her very first patient, she stumbled and stuttered over her words so badly that she had to leave the room to collect herself. How, when drawing the same patient’s blood, she’d pierced the vein at the wrong angle. How the blood had pooled up under his skin, a dark purple stain in the crook of his arm.

On second thought, she could tell him about anatomy dissection. She could recount the bile that had burned at the back of her throat the first time they uncovered the cadaver’s face; how she’d had to excuse herself to vomit quietly in the bushes outside of the lab; and how her face had burned hot afterward under the awkward, sympathetic glances of her classmates. 

If it was a matter of legacy, she could go even further back than that, tracing all the way to when she was eight and had stubbornly refused to go with her mother to talk to the shabby-looking man waving at them in the park, because he looked dirty and smelled funny and there was no way that guy could be her dad anyway.

She knew, sure as she knew the elements of the periodic table, the smell of formalin, and the precise number of footsteps between her room and and the front door, that Sherlock hadn’t killed anybody. But she had. 

Gerald Castoro hadn’t simply died, after all. She’d nicked his vena cava. Her hands—her small, steady surgeon’s hands—had wavered just enough to put a tear in the vessel, and no amount of applied pressure or number of quick tidy stitches had been able to save him from that. She’d killed him with hands that were supposed to heal, and no amount of practice or years of training had been able to save her from that. How, then, could any guilt she felt over his death not be colored by shame? 

Jem from Le Milieu. Shame.  
Mycroft Holmes. Shame.  
Andrew Mittal. Guilt. Sorrow. And shame. 

She remembers learning about shame, defining it for patients on her psych rotation as she guided them through depression and anxiety disorder inventories. Shame: a negative, painful social emotion that can be seen as resulting from a comparison of the self’s action with the self’s standards.

She is, if she thinks about it, a lifelong student of shame. 

She remembers her mother’s words, hissed in her ear when, as a child, she’d made a fuss over a desired snow globe in the Empire State Building gift shop—You should be ashamed of your behavior. What will everyone else think? 

She remembers her ill-fated first foray into sex—how the boy, a friend of hers from the dorms in college, had been able to laugh off their awkwardness and lack of chemistry, while she’d curled up in bed and sobbed, going over in her mind the mistakes she’d made.

She remembers the days following her license suspension, those blurry weeks when it was all she could do to get herself out of bed every day, and recalls Ty’s tentative suggestions that she talk to someone. No, not to him. To someone. She recalls how the thought of admitting anything to anyone had made her stomach churn. How, even after she’d started meeting weekly with Dr. Reed, she’d taken months to admit as much to her parents. 

She gets up from her chair to follow Sherlock to the front door, swallowing the lump in her throat. 

Forget being a student. She’s a fucking Olympian.


End file.
